Tuesday, February 12, 2013

What I'm Watching: 2013... and... GO.

It’s strange to look up from one’s desk and realize that an
old year has come and gone and then January is here and suddenly, BOOM,
February.

I keep saying I’m gonna slow down on the TV write-ups, but
they’re fun and easy and my life, in general, is very stress and so I go with
fun and easy.

I’d apologize if I had more readers.But I don’t, and those who do read me find
this kind of thing at least somewhat interesting.

And so we begin:

The Walking Dead:

I was kind of amazed last week when my wife and I finally
got completely caught up on our DVR, finishing off everything except for one
episode of a short series that went off the air over a year ago.The last thing we had to wipe off was The
Walking Dead, a show that piles up on our DVR week in and week out because this
season has gotten SO much more violent and involves a lot more of my wife
cowering behind pillows while people get eaten.

Thus, this week’s episode remains unseen by us.

On the bright side, we’re caught up to that point, and
overall I’m pretty pleased with this season.The show has been working harder to keep the speed up, keep the zombies
coming, and keep the twists and revelations zipping along each and every week.

Still, the show has one fatal flaw, and I don’t know what,
if anything can be done about it.It has
no endpoint.

These people are looking for a safe place, but week by week
we mostly just learn that there ISN’T one.This should raise the tension, as anyone can die, but it’s hard to get
attached to people when you know that everyone is marked for death.

Ultimately, I don’t wonder if the show would be better if
Daryl, the clear fan favorite, didn’t take over the group.In fact, I wonder if that’d be the thing that
takes it to the next level.Rick is the
one character who can’t die in the comics (so sayeth the creator) so killing
him in the TV show would come as a genuine shock.

Either way, the show continues to be well-made, and it runs
through its paces nicely.But I wonder
if the show will ever be more than a B for me.

American Idol:

I did a whole piece about the show already, but I suppose I
should mention it again.After the big
blow-up, Nicki and Mariah seem to have settled down, though Nicki still hasn’t
quite worked out when she’s being critical in a helpful way and when she’s just
being mean.

Beyond that, well, we’ve wandered through and most of the
guys have been picked, and while I think a lot of them are talented people, I’m
not all that in love with any of them.And Matheus, the dude who was on The Glee Project… I dunno, man.I’m a little sorry he was cut, but it was
strange to see him coming on the show and being all, “I didn’t know I could
really sing!” and “Wow, you love me even though I’m short!” and “I’ve never
sung with a band before!”Except, of
course, he did on The Glee Project.

So weird.

In conclusion, if a dude wins, I hope it’s the guy with the
turban.He just seems so nice.

Modern Family

It was funny.It
remains funny.The ratings are down, but
then again, it’s up against Idol.Ty
Burrell is an American treasure.That
about covers it.

Supernatural

Meanwhile, Supernatural just got picked up for a ninth
season, and remains the only show to survive when moved from the WB to the
CW.The ratings are actually up this
year, and it hovers in third place on the CW channel.

It’s spent the last two episodes rebooting a bit of the
mythology, and adding some backstory in the form of the mysterious Men of
Letters group.

What was going on there?I theorize that it’s actually a semi-pilot for what comes next.A chance to tell the CW, “Here is where we go
next season.We’ve got a new office, and
we’re happy to become a version of The X-Files.Or spin off another show.Or,
like, whatever, man.”

Honestly, even if Supernatural is cancelled, I’d totally
watch a Men of Letters show starring Garth, Kevin, Felicia Day, Cas, and the
Golem as they fight evil.

The Big Bang Theory:

‘S funny, really.The
cast gets bigger, the “what a bunch of geeks” jokes remain, and yet the writing
and performances mean we get a few good laughs every episode.

Much like Modern Family, good enough for me.

Community:

Ah, Community.The
creator got kicked out, and the new guys are in, and… they’re trying.I’ll give them an A for effort, and a B- on
their first episode.

Really, the big issue is that they get that there’s a meta
aspect to the show, and a “tropes” aspect to the show, and that’s good.

What they don’t get is that they do ONE
trope an episode. In this one, we got The Hunger Games, Sitcoms, and Muppet
Babies.Any one of those would have been
fine, and maybe good and maybe great.All three was a bit too much.

I will say that if they sub out Fred Willard for Chevy
Chase in season 5 (if there is one) I would totally be down for
that.

The Vampire Diaries:

Due to DVR issues (many of them) I’m now TWO episodes
behind.Given that it’s sweeps, one
would think all the cool stuff was happening.

But… Hmmm… what to say, what to say?Vampire Diaries was, for a while, a great
show that ran through five or six seasons of stories in about three
seasons.What that means is that, on a
practical level, we’re now somewhere into season six or seven, and it
shows.The magic stuff is getting even more
random.The emotional stuff is still
good, but mostly played out, and there have been versions of every emotion
played out now, which makes bits of it stale.

There’s talk of a spin-off now, and I think it could be
interesting.There are some great
characters here, and sending them away for a while might freshen things up a bit.

I’ll admit, I’m only semi-curious to see how this new
plotline plays out.There’s a whole
“cure” thing going on here, and done well, it could really revive the show for
season five (which is just got the pickup for).Done wrong, and the show will spiral.

Spartacus:

I finally figured out what makes me so sad about this show.

It’s never coming back after this.And its audience will never grow.It’s just done after these next few weeks.

A short background on this thought:

Back in the 80s, there was a great miniseries called V.It was about aliens taking over the
planet.It was a huge hit, and the
creator planned to do a new miniseries every year that would check in on the
ongoing story.

A really cool premise.

Then he got kicked off the second miniseries, and it was
completed without all that much of his input.Then it was turned into a standard TV show.Then it was cancelled.

Years later, he tried to get a new TV miniseries made that
caught up with the characters about 20 years later.When he couldn’t get it together, he instead
released it as a novel.One that ignored
everything that happened after his first miniseries.

What the creator wanted to do is, more or less, what
happened with Spartacus.There were 12
episodes the first season.Then the 6
episode prequel.Then 10 episodes.Then 10 more.But each was, more-or-less, a self-contained story with some recurring
characters.

38 episodes total.Not enough to syndicate.More
problematic, they were made for cable, and they run anywhere from 52-58 minutes
each.Even if they were syndicated,
things would have to be chopped out.And
it’s a pretty tight story as-is.

And then there’s the blood.And unclothed people.And… just a
lot of those things, really.Oh, and
adult language.

In the end, the show can only really have a home on cable
and DVD, and I can’t see it getting a huge
following on either.Perhaps I’m
wrong.But I’ve seen the ratings, and I
have my doubts.

Ultimately, I dunno where and how the show will land in
history, but it saddens me that such an amazing story is going to have to fight
so hard to get in front of more eyes.

In conclusion: A great show that continues to be great.

Being Human (UK)

Man, what to say, what to say.I found out a few days ago that this series,
number five, is gonna be the last one.

When I started series four, I think I would have been okay
with that.Series three had an amazing
ending, wherein the vampire (of the vampire, werewolf, and ghost) was staked,
starting a war.

Then came series four, and in the first episode, we lost our
werewolves.

That left us with the ghost, who was, through no fault of
her own, the least interesting character on the show.

My wife and I watched the first episode with unrestrained
excitement.Then curiosity.Then confusion.And finally, a kind of sadness.Suffice to say, it wasn’t that good of an
episode, and at the end of it, three-fourths of the cast we loved so much were
gone from the show.

And in their place, we got one character who we weren’t big
fans of: the idiot werewolf.

We stepped away from the show for months and months, not
really wanting to go back and wrap up the story.But finally, the hiatus came, and it was time
to go through and clear the decks while everything was off the air.

I can see why some people couldn’t get into it, and the
reason many stepped off the platform after the fourth series was done.All eight episodes were, after all, about a
bunch of people wanting to kill a baby, and now there were new characters to
sort out, and a bizarre storyline that involved time travel, and…

It was a lot to take in.

And of course, by the end of the series, we were looking at
a (mostly) all-new cast.

The thing is, I liked the story.It had conviction, it carried itself to a
logical, brutal end, and while it wasn’t a happy one, it was the one the show
needed.

So the new series has begun, and we’ve got a pretty fresh
cast, and… the series has been cancelled.After being knocked down to six episodes.

I get it.People fall
in love with characters, and that’s a lot of changes in a short little period
of time.And yet, I’ll be sad to catch
the last few ‘sodes, knowing that the show is at an end.

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About Me

Joshua Grover-David Patterson is a freelance writer, screenwriter, and blogger. His articles on pop culture, film and the Internet have appeared in The Post-Crescent, Bull magazine, delight! magazine and Film Threat. Patterson’s films have won 13 awards and appeared in 29 film festivals all over the world, including in Japan, Australia, Hungary, Norway, the UK, and throughout the United States. Patterson resides in Wisconsin with his wife and their daughter.